Five free tools for network diagramming

Introduction

At some point, every administrator will need to diagram a network. For some, it's their primary duty -- and they tend to rely on powerful, expensive tools like Microsoft Visio. But for those who need to use a diagramming tool only occasionally, a cheaper solution is best. Luckily, there are several free apps that handle the task well.

Here are five tools that can help you diagram your network without breaking your budget. Some are Windows-only, while others are cross platform.

CADE

CADE was developed primarily as a CAD tool, but it also serves as a handy network diagramming tool. It's a 2D vector editor for Windows. Although it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some costlier tools, it can handle the task of diagramming your network with ease.

CADE

CADE offers most of the basic functionality found in Visio. Once you've installed CADE, you can download sample diagrams to help you get started.

Dia

Dia is an open source, GTK+ diagramming tool that has a shallow learning curve and can help you create basic network diagrams. Like CADE, Dia was inspired by Visio -- but with a much more casual approach and feel. Dia loads and saves XML formatted documents that are gziped by default to save space. Dia is also available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Diagram Designer

Diagram Designer is another freeware tool that suffers (like Dia) from looking a bit on the outdated side. But Diagram Designer's ease of use should certainly make up for the old-school feel of the application.

Gliffy

Gliffy is the only Web-based tool on this list. It's easy to use and it works on any platform. With the ability to drag and drop shapes from numerous object libraries, you can have your network diagram ready in no time.

Gliffy

You can use Gliffy for free, but if you really want to get into creating some diagrams, you may want to pony up the $4.95/month fee for 200 diagrams, 200 MB of storage, public and private diagrams, and unlimited collaborators.

yEd

yEd is a Java-based tool that's available for Windows and Linux. It has a great user interface and features diagram creation, auto-layout, data import (GraphML, Excel XLS, GEDCOM, GML, XML), and data export (PDF, SWF, JPG, GIF, BMP, and HTML image maps).

yEd

The auto-layout feature is particularly cool. It uses a wide range of sophisticated layout algorithms to automatically arrange your diagrams, saving you time and effort.

Introduction

At some point, every administrator will need to diagram a network. For some, it's their primary duty -- and they tend to rely on powerful, expensive tools like Microsoft Visio. But for those who need to use a diagramming tool only occasionally, a cheaper solution is best. Luckily, there are several free apps that handle the task well.

Here are five tools that can help you diagram your network without breaking your budget. Some are Windows-only, while others are cross platform.

About Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic and Linux.com. He’s an avid promoter of open source and the voice of The Android Expert. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website getjackd.net.

Full Bio

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic and Linux.com. He’s an avid promoter of open source and the voice of The Android Expert. For more news about Jack Wallen, visit his website getjackd.net.

Jack,
Thank you for providing a link for the Blog Version of this article. Some of us have a real hard time with Slide Shows. I have to pass them up completely, no matter how important the subject matter is to me.
Thank You.

I've used THE DUDE for a about a year now and have been satisfied with it. Also, it is free.
Network Mapping And Monitoring
The Dude is a unique network monitor that incorporates an interactive map of your network layout, that helps you visualize the structure of your network and provides direct access to network functions specific to each item. It can automatically discover your local network and draw a preliminary layout that can be further customized and saved.
You can manually add items, customize the icons and captions used for each device and connect nodes with lines and other drawing tools. The program supports various network monitoring tasks from simple ping checks to port probes and service checks.
Other features include history logging, outage notifications (email, beep, popup, eventlog), SNMP support, map export to PDF or PNG as well as customizable interface layouts and more.

While I am no stranger to network admin, I will admit the networks I deal with most are much smaller than what a lot of people deal with. That said, the need for diagrams has never been critcial, but that does not mean someone should not have them, so for a person who has little to no experience creating them, what would be best to start with? Obvously ease of use or at least ease of figuring out would be most important for starting out, but also the ability to get everything needed. Fortuantly, the "everything needed" would be very basic items as they are not very complex.
Thanks,
Rob